


A Traveller From an Antique Land

by ladyknight27



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-12 11:10:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5664019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyknight27/pseuds/ladyknight27
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time River meets the Doctor, while she's still a university student.</p><p>Super old, super AU - I must have written this before the second season of Eleven.  But I'm moving all my old fic to the same place (here) so I'm posting it anyways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Traveller From an Antique Land

River Song is nineteen, a university student majoring in anthropology (if she had her way, it would be strictly archaeology and the department could keep the rest, but they were far too wedded to the old-fashioned majors system to allow that.) It’s 0139 and she’s in her little study on the 27th floor of the library… well, it wasn’t originally hers but she’d occupied it for so long that somebody had jokingly put a nameplate on the door, as if she were a graduate student already. 

She’s just started to decipher a short text from 19th-century Earth for her least favorite class, linguistics. She has to translate it and write a thesis on its interpretation, due in two days, and she’s already so frustrated that she’s tempted to break into Professor Tam’s office and take a peek at his translation (she knows he’s done it; it’s his style to make his students produce inferior work, then humiliate them all by revealing just how wrong they are once they turn in their papers.) 

She’s not bad at translation, precisely, but the old English verb tenses give her trouble; she’s only gotten as far as “I met/meet/will meet a traveller” when she hears an odd buzzing noise and the door to her little study swings open. Funny, she thought she’d locked it.

“Hello!” a cheerful voice greets her, sounding pleasant and unconcerned and very unfamiliar. It’s a man’s voice, and as she quickly shoves back her chair and turns to face him, she registers his air of familiarity. It’s puzzling, but she has no time to reflect on it, because the man rattles on, “Have you got a copy of MacKenna’s _Artefacts of Raxacoricofallapatorius_ on you? I scanned the database-” and here he grins and waves what looks like a silver pen-light at her- “and it says you’ve got it, and I rather need it. Bit of a problem- well, several problems- well, you know. And I can’t get at the copy in The Library anymore…” and here he looks grim for a moment, but he finishes, “so I came here.”

She is staring at him in unabashed shock, at a complete loss for words, with none of her her usual equilibrium. Somehow, in her study at her school in the library she knows intimately, she’s lost, completely out of her depth. This man is a complete stranger, she’s sure of it, but she’s not sure he knows that. Sort of a goofy-looking man, with that long hair flopping into his eyes and that tweed jacket and a bow tie, for goodness’ sake, like every archetype of the old Earth university professor… she realizes she’s still staring and looks away, pursing her lips. 

Abruptly, he shifts gears. “What are you working on this time? Ooh, Ozymandias. ‘I met a traveller from an antique land…’ I love Shelley. Brilliant poet, got sort of weird though by the end, though they say that’s the price of art… I rather think Byron had something to do with it, and I would know,” he rambles. “Now, there’s a man who threw a great party…” But then, another sudden shift, and he asks, “So have you got it, River?” He’s still smiling at her, but now there’s sort of a question in his eyes as he registers her confusion. “The book. _Artefacts of Raxacoricofallapatorius_. Look, it’s right there in that pile. I need it, please.”

Finally, she finds her voice. “How did you know my name?” she asks, as she pulls herself together and puts one hand on her hip. She’s frowning, but that doesn’t discourage this strange man at all. “And who are you?”

He takes her in with a long gaze that should be an awkward leer but isn’t, and starts chuckling to himself. She thinks of herself as he must see her: too-long hair that’s still decidedly curly, an old ripped pair of khaki pants and a plain shirt, no shoes, none of her usual polish. No makeup, even, and she makes a mental note to keep a tube of lipstick with her from now on. “Now I understand,” he murmurs to himself. Then he does the strangest thing yet- in a few surprisingly graceful motions, he crosses the small room towards her, cups the side of her face, and kisses her forehead. “Oh, River. You’re going to be magnificent,” he murmurs. 

Then the moment passes, so she does the only thing she can think to do- she hands him the book that he’s so desperate to have. He takes it with a grin and says, “I’ll bring it back, sometime.” And then off he goes, leaving her with more questions than she started with, and most importantly- how did he know her name? Because the nameplate on her door, the little joke that apparently led him to her, only says “R. Song.”

Finally she shakes her head. A glance at her watch confirms that it’s 0225 now and she needs to be working, so she sits back down and looks at what she had written: “I met/meet/will meet a traveller…” A half-smile quirks her mouth and she finishes the line that the stranger had quoted earlier. A traveller from an antique land, indeed. As she keeps working, her translation sounds more and more like a poem, and she thinks maybe, this time, she might surprise Professor Tam.

Three days later, there’s a book sitting on her desk in her study, even though she swears the door had been locked: _Artefacts of Raxacorticofallapatorius_. She almost wishes it weren’t there, because then she could have pretended that whole strange night was a dream. But there, on a little scrap of paper sticking out of page 112, is a note. All it says is, “Thanks- the Doctor.” And she knows, somehow, that she’ll see that strange man again.


End file.
